


Puppy Love

by byesweetheart (ConstantComment)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (Different Second Meeting), Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Dogs, M/M, Pre-Slash, Teary Boys, first stirrings of romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstantComment/pseuds/byesweetheart
Summary: “I’ve never held a puppy before,” Kageyama says, obviously defeated.And Shouyou looks at him, right around the time he sounds out the word, ‘puppy.’ And then he looks some more. Kageyama’s expression slides back into that scowly face he was making before Shouyou interrupted, and Shouyou starts to wonder if his face is juststuckthat way, if that face is the result of mild unhappiness instead of sheer rage. “Oh,” Shouyou replies.





	Puppy Love

**Author's Note:**

> I always find myself rambling about this very subject, so I thought I'd actually write it. :P

Shouyou has gotten used to the route he and Mom take down from the mountain on day trips in Torono Town. Sitting in the car with the radio muttering and sputtering on low, he presses his forehead to the window and traces the treetops with his eyes as they sink to rooftops, the sun winking between them and marking the back of his eyelids with fuzzy shapes when he blinks. He’s done this since he could sit in the front passenger seat, and he’s done this so often—every weekend—that every time, his heart starts to race before he notices they’re almost downtown. 

But, today Natsu is in the back in her booster seat, and normally she would be nodding off from the rumbling sounds of the car, but today is too important for that. Shouyou twists and looks at her with the turn of the car onto the main stretch into town, and sees her chewing on the end of her pigtail nervously, big eyes moving over all the activity outside the car windows. 

Today isn’t a day trip, because today is special. 

Today, the day after her ninth birthday, Natsu will be getting a rabbit. 

And Shouyou is _not_ happy about it. 

Well, he’s sort of excited… but, he’s also had his arms folded since last night when Mom announced the news over Natsu’s birthday cake: Natsu was finally going to get a beloved pet, a gift Shouyou has never been given in his fifteen whole years of existing and being a good son on this planet. Shouyou crosses his arms tighter when his inner rant loops back around to the _months_ he spent pretending to walk his imaginary dog—a massive Husky with one blue eye and one brown like his—every morning before school. He even set out water for him and talked about training lessons with Mom, who laughed and ruffled his hair but would not budge on getting him a real dog. 

Today is the day he regrets every single birthday candle he’s wished away, because now that there’s another pet for the family, Husky the Husky will never be his! 

Engrossed in his sulk, Shouyou doesn’t realize that the car is parked until a hand rests on his elbow and startles him. He looks around, sees the dented bumper of a tiny pink town car out of their dusty windshield, and then Mom’s face as she smiles at him from the driver’s seat. 

She has that look like she knows everything, but her eyes slip into crescents kindly, and she says, “Sure you don’t want to come in?” 

Shouyou shakes his head, Natsu whines to be let out of her booster seat, still too small to sit in a full-sized seat (ha!), and then Mom is climbing out of the car so Natsu will get her way. 

She always gets her way! 

The sulk is going well—maybe five minutes or so of dedicated fuming—when Shouyou peeks out the window at the pet store’s glass storefront across the sidewalk, where the display cages are. He spots a litter of roly-poly fuzzball kittens, too wobbly for their little spread legs, and then a cage occupied by three bean-shapes: one creamy, one chestnut, and one chocolate. Shouyou sighs when he realizes they are young puppies, just old enough to be sold. One, the chocolate-colored one, yawns wide and pink, and Shouyou’s sulk fades away.

It fades away so fast that a small noise pushes up from his chest and out of his mouth. 

He nearly scrambles from the car—in fact, his hand misses the door candle twice before he slams down on the lock with his palm—but another sight stills his hand in mid-air. 

There’s another kid. 

In the side-mirror Shouyou can see two things: the tiny dent he made when he ran into the car on his bike last year when his mom was backing out of the driveway, and a tall boy about his age, paused on the sidewalk in jeans, a purple sweatshirt and a hat that says HOLLYWOOD. 

This boy looks familiar in a way that makes Shouyou _angry_ , but it doesn’t take long to figure out why. 

The boy is… Kawa…? Kita? No—it’s _Kageyama_ from the Kitagawa volleyball team, the one almost single-handedly responsible for Shouyou’s (and Yukigaoka’s) very short stint at the Junior High Athletics Meet, and the one he promised he’d beat one day, blubbering like a little kid, after it was all over. 

But nevermind _that_ , Shouyou knows Kouji and Izumi are gonna flip when he tells them about this later, because Kageyama has stopped and is pressing his hand to the window right in front of where the puppies are tumbling around with their stubby legs and tapered tails. Kageyama, that bossy and downright unpleasant kid who dashed Shouyou’s dreams to the ground so easily, is standing out on the sidewalk alone and looking like, well, more or less like a kicked puppy as he leans closer and closer until his nose is almost smudging the glass. 

Shouyou watches him, watches his faint reflection in the storefront window like he would the swaying, leafy bits of a towering pine tree on the mountainside—with idle fascination. Then, he watches him jolt like he has forgotten something, walk past, and then turn right back around to frown at the puppies once more. 

Shouyou is out of the car within seconds, and before either of them knows it, he has stomped right up to Kageyama on the sidewalk and barked, “What are you doing?” 

Kageyama blinks and looks down at him. A look of embarrassment and politeness sits in the corners of his eyes before it slips into confusion. “I’m… I’m looking inside,” he replies, sounding even more confused than his face gives away. 

“You’re being weird—” Shouyou starts, but then the confusion on Kageyama’s face swerves abruptly into something Shouyou _does not like_. 

“Oh,” Kageyama continues, cutting him off, “you’re that crying kid.” 

Silence falls between them as Shouyou’s gut squirms. He sputters, shaking his head, because this is not how this was supposed to go—not that he’d _planned_ it. He barely remembers how he got from the car to this spot, staring up at this jerk Kageyama who is—he’s just— _they’re supposed to be talking about how weird he’s being, not about Shouyou’s worst day ever!_

“I am not,” Shouyou states plainly. 

Kageyama leans on one leg and glares at him harder with one hand in his sweatshirt pocket, before his expression clears again and he concludes, “Yeah, you’re Number One from that shitty team.” 

Shouyou blushes. It feels like his toes might be blushing, too. Maybe also his knees? Because this is not good. 

“My name is Hinata!” 

“Kageyama.” 

“ _I know who you are!_ Why are you making scary faces at the puppies?” 

Kageyama grunts, says, “I am not,” and Shouyou huffs. 

“Are too.” 

“Am not.” 

“Are too.” 

“I’ve never held a puppy before,” Kageyama says, obviously defeated. 

And Shouyou looks at him, right around the time he sounds out the word, ‘puppy.’ And then he looks some more. Kageyama’s expression slides back into that scowly face he was making before Shouyou interrupted, and Shouyou starts to wonder if his face is just _stuck_ that way, if that face is the result of mild unhappiness instead of sheer rage. “Oh,” Shouyou replies. 

Kageyama turns back to the shop window, exhaling softly when the three little dogs climb slowly and clumsily over each other to seek the best, most snuggly spot to curl up in. 

“Wait, really?” 

Kageyama looks back at him and nods. 

“You know you can go in, right?” 

“Dumbass, of course I do,” Kageyama snaps. 

Shouyou bristles. “Well, then why don’t you?!” 

“Just to look at them closer?” Kageyama retorts with a roll of his eyes. “I didn’t come here to look at dogs.” 

“Hm. Doesn’t look that way.” 

“I just happen to be on this street! It’s unrelated!” 

Folding his arms for the seventeenth time today, Shouyou levels a look at this Kageyama jerk. “You can hold them, if you ask,” he says. 

Something in Kageyama changes when he realizes what Shouyou has said. 

“What?” Kageyama asks, and his voice is soft. 

Shouyou sighs, looks at the puppies, which makes his heart clench, then decides. “C’mon, jerkface,” he says with a tilt of his head, and leads Kageyama into the shop. 

It smells musty and fuzzy in there, full of pet food and kitty litter and rubbery squeaky-toys that combine into a smell both off-putting and achy in Shouyou’s chest, but he rounds the corner after the bell jingles at the door, and then he and the kid who beat him out of the only volleyball tournament he’s ever been to are looking down at the blanketed cage set against the window. There’s a glass partition on the front, but Shouyou could just reach over the barrier and stroke his finger down a tiny, warm-soft nose if he wanted. He doesn’t yet, though. He looks around for a shop attendant and glances at Kageyama, who is even worse-off than he was before. 

His eyes are wide and his mouth is small and his hands are twisted together over the pocket of his sweatshirt like if he doesn’t lock his fingers together he’ll grab a puppy and run. 

It’s pretty understandable. Shouyou has himself thought about just stealing a puppy and running into the woods to live as a mountain man, a couple of times. It would solve having to ask his mother to please, please, please let him adopt one for yet another time. 

An elderly man in a teal vest appears from an aisle crowded with canned cat food, and Shouyou waves to him. “Excuse me, sir! Could we pet the puppies for a bit?” 

The man, who Shouyou recognizes from his frequent visits in years past, nods with a pleasant smile and disappears down another aisle, this time full of dog food. He’s always been like that. Shouyou’s not sure that he even talks. 

Glancing at Kageyama, whose eyebrows sit in upset darts over his still wide eyes, Shouyou leans lightly on the glass and runs his thumb over the fuzzy forehead of Chestnut, who blinks her eyes open and lifts her head off of Chocolate’s butt to snuffle at his fingers. She licks him sleepily, rousing little by little, and Shouyou fits his palm over her shoulders and rubs down her spine to the base of her tail in soft sweeps. Cream whimpers and turns her head, nosing at his wrist before wriggling to sit up and paw at his hand, and he giggles. She’s an attention hog. Chocolate, on the other hand, snoozes away heedless of Shouyou’s presence. 

Cream distracts him when she yawns and squeaks a little all at once. He reaches in with both hands and plays with her soft ears for a moment before saying, “They’re not shy. Just pet one! You won’t hurt them.” 

After a moment, Shouyou sees an arm reach slowly into the cage out of the corner of his eye, and then Kageyama is scritching tentatively over Chocolate’s sleepy head. He makes a small noise, and Shouyou does not look at him, and then he moves to Chestnut’s paw stretched over Chocolate’s back. His thumb presses into the pink pads for a moment. 

“It’s so soft,” he whispers. 

Shouyou can’t help but smile a little. “Here,” he says, and taps Chestnut’s ear with his pinky. “Touch her ears.” 

Kageyama reaches with both hands toward Chestnut, who nudges at his fingers and laps at them sweetly before he can get any further. “Oh,” Kageyama says, and Shouyou laughs a little as he pets under Cream’s chin with a knuckle. Chocolate rouses again and stumbles out from under his sister toward Shouyou, hitting him in the wrist with his wet nose, and Shouyou is thankful he didn’t head straight for Kageyama—this kid is already so overwhelmed, he’d probably start hyperventilating if he had to pet _two_ puppies. 

He’s so weird, but Shouyou finds his eyes dragging toward his face when he leans forward over Chestnut to look closer. 

“Good doggy,” Kageyama whispers to Chestnut, who licks at his wrist when he cups her face in his hands to pet her ears. She trills out one of those half-baked puppy noises, and both Shouyou and Kageyama gasp in surprise. Shouyou’s cooing dissolves into a quiet giggle again, but Kageyama just huffs. Shouyou looks up at him. 

There’s another funny expression on his face. At least it’s no longer angry-looking, but if it’s supposed to be a smile it’s not doing a very good job. It wobbles over his lips like he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek or something, but his eyes are squinting a little. In the light from the window Shouyou can tell his eyes are a little blue, and then wonders what he’s going to do with that information and why it was important to observe in the first place. 

Cream and Chocolate cuddle up and nip at Shouyou’s fingers, but not before he says to Kageyama, “Do you want to hold her now?” 

He turns to the taller boy, hands moving from soft fur to grip the edge of the glass barrier. Kageyama swallows and his throat bobs and he fidgets again. “Hold her?” he repeats. 

Shouyou lets out another laugh. “Yeah, of course!” 

Kageyama shifts from foot to foot, removes his hand reluctantly from Chestnut and taps on the top of the glass barrier with his palm. “...How?” 

“Wow, you’re pretty hopeless.” 

Kageyama’s face shutters. 

“It’s okay!” Shouyou nearly shouts, and the puppies startle at his raised voice. “You can be hopeless,” he adds, under his breath. “I’m hopeless at volleyball, but if I practice more and more I’ll be the best.” 

Kageyama snorts, and his hair falls over his (blue) eyes as he ducks his head until his chin is hidden under the collar of his sweatshirt. “Don’t see what that has to do with dogs.” 

“Puppy dogs!” Shouyou corrects with a chirp. “Okay, okay, okay, it’s not hard. And the good thing is practicing holding puppies is the best kind of practice. You just—” He reaches back in and rubs Chestnut’s little head before petting down her back and reaching under her front legs around her ribcage. “—and hold under their chest... and you gotta make sure you hold their bottom, too! So they feel safe.” 

Kageyama watches him, white-knuckling the edge of the cage. 

“You ready?” Shouyou asks, and Kageyama twists his lip into his mouth when Shouyou places Chestnut in his arms. Chestnut wriggles and gurgles a little in his hands until he curls her to his chest, face hidden as he stoops around her little warm-fuzzy body. 

Shouyou has to pick up another puppy—or two—to counteract the weird feeling in his chest when he watches Kageyama cuddle this tiny animal. 

When he turns back, with Cream and Chocolate in his arms, dodging little wet kisses with short giggles, Kageyama looks up at him for a second. Cream even sneezes on Shouyou’s chin, but he barely notices, because there’s a shiny trail of wetness that’s peeking out of the corner of Kageyama’s eye. It spills over a little when Chestnut wriggles again and catches his cheek with her tongue. 

“Why are—are you _crying_?” 

Kageyama sniffs and pulls Chestnut to his face so he can nuzzle her neck. “Shut up,” he says, but the effect is lost with the tears… and the baby dog. 

Shouyou grins. “Hey, uh…” he begins with a false-deep voice. “‘You’re that crying kid!’” 

“Shut. Up,” Kageyama grits out, glaring with a puppy in his arms. “It’s really cute, and…” 

Shouyou cuddles up in the softness of the puppies, grinning at Kageyama. 

“...I didn’t think it would like me.” 

Shouyou makes an affronted noise. He looks down at Cream and Chocolate, the former having fallen asleep draped over his left arm, and the latter chewing on the thumb of his right. “Dogs aren’t choosy.” 

Kageyama lifts his head to grunt, “ _Hey._ ” 

“I just mean they’re un—un… AH! Unconditional. Their love is unconditional, so, ya know, you just gotta love ‘em back.” 

Kageyama looks at him for a long moment, and despite himself Shouyou feels his face going red. Kageyama, jerkface volleyball king, with the cutest puppy ever in his hands, is sort of maybe not-frowning at him. 

Kageyama looks away, back down at Chestnut whose pink tongue is hanging out a little, and he lifts her back up to no-frown into more puppy kisses. 

“She’s so beautiful,” Kageyama mumbles, almost too quiet for Shouyou to hear, and Shouyou’s breathing goes a little funny when he realizes what he’s said. 

He takes a big breath to—he isn’t sure—to say something, but then he spots Mom and Natsu as they round approach the cash register up front. Natsu is weighed down by a large, white rabbit, and she looks triumphant. 

“Mooooom, Shouyou’s stealing puppies!” she cries when she spots him. 

“I am not!” he shouts, and Cream startles awake. Grumbling, he puts his cuddly friends back in the cage and despairs a little when they whine at being put down. He’s not going to cry, he’s _not_ going to cry, he’s not &mdhash 

Kageyama carefully places Chestnut next to her siblings and stares at them with watery eyes. 

Shouyou wipes his own quickly, and wanders back outside, Kageyama in his wake. 

Natsu and Mom pass by them with curious expressions, loading the car with the bunny in its new cage and many different bunny accessories, but Shouyou stares at Kageyama, who stares at the pet shop sign. 

“Um,” Kageyama says eventually, “thanks.” 

Shouyou raises his eyebrows, tries not to smile because this kid is _so serious._ “You’re welcome,” he tries, but his grin breaks out and he giggles shortly. 

Kageyama rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t shout or say something rude. Which, Shouyou supposes, is an improvement. 

“I hope you can get a puppy, someday,” he finds himself saying. 

“Yeah, you too,” Kageyama mumbles, and a flash of him crying with a puppy in his arms comes back to Shouyou, makes his heart skip a beat. 

For the second time today (but probably not the last) Shouyou acts without thinking. He steps toward Kageyama and wraps his arms around him, squeezing and pressing his forehead to his chest for a brief moment, before jumping away. 

Kageyama’s face is red, but he only rubs the back of his neck and says, “Uh—see you on the court... dumbass.” 

Shouyou sighs. Kageyama ruined it. Maybe. 

He opens the door to the car where Mom and Natsu are probably staring at them, and smiles at Kageyama. “See you, Kageyama!” 

As Mom pulls away from the curb, Shouyou watches Kageyama in the rear view mirror. He sees his shrinking outline glance at the pet shop one last time, before he moves on down the street, before he can’t be seen at all, too far away. 

With a small sigh, he turns and catches Mom looking at him, sees Natsu in the rear view mirror, with her fingers held tight to the rabbit cage, staring at him, too. When he looks back at Mom, she grins. 

“What?!” 

“You don’t have a puppy hidden in your sweater, do you?” she asks with a laugh. 

“Ugh, _Mom!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! ^u^
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://byesweetheart.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/byesweetheart_)!


End file.
